Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Inspired to start travelling with Traveller

James Maliszewski over at Grognardia has great post about Traveller. Long live the little black books, huzzah! I haven't thought about running Traveller for some time. I have a metric ton of material scooped from the internet. Nearly 500 megs of files from all editions of traveller except maybe the Hero version. The weight of all that information has blinded me to the simplicity of the 3 LBB's . Like all the old school classics, the original game became overlarge and bloated when the designers tried to answer the players need for more detail. Its not wrong to want more (I did to during that era). But the loss of the essence of the game was tragic in retrospect. James' view that the the original game is the best version inspired me to take a fresh approach to my favourite sci-fi RPG obsession. I looked over my hard copy books ;-the reprinted books from Far Future Enterprises-The Traveller Book , 1982 soft cover with the binding failing-The Traveller Book , 1982 hard cover In good shape (for now)-two of the LBB's , books 1 and 2- the Traveller reprint, books 1-3 by QuickLink InteractiveThe hard cover I want to keep in the best shape possible and the soft covers binding won't last. In keeping with the old school feel I wanted a minimalist rule book so the reprints are out. I am missing the third LBB and don't know when I will find it. That left the QLI reprint. Looking it over I noticed for the first time that there is no extra material in the book. No setting info just the rules. Damn, I could make my own setting just like the olden days! And since none of my perspective players is familiar with the setting, its all good. Creating my own universe allows me to explain why: the computers aren't as good as we have now, there is no nano-tech or biotechnology and why the guns are not more advanced. And account for any other missing tech item the players think of. So after years of acquiring lots and lots of books, files and programs I'm going to go with just the first 3 LBB's.

1 comment:

This reminds me of something Andy Slack wrote ages ago in White Dwarf (when it was still a proper games magazine). He said to forget High Guard and its multi-million-ton monstrosities. "Negligibly large" were his exact words on such things.

Instead, stick to fleets of Book 2 ships. They're easier to design & use, and Slack sketched out how they allow for more role-playing situations.

The "Burgess Shale" period may be long past, but that ain't reason enough to stop you cooking up a homebrewed 'verse.